THE Old Place, PART 1

Welcome to The Old Place, as it is affectionately known. It's amazing for me to see because I have been to Alabama twice before- in April of 1999 with my family when I was in college and on a work trip in April of 2004. They have been pouring their blood, sweat and tears into rebuilding and restoring this old house for almost 10 years. It was a house very similar to the house that once stood here, but was torn down when the family needed wood & wanted to move their main house closer to the main road (sometime during the depression I think).

We visited the Old Place on Friday after Thanksgiving, and I was loving the brilliant blue skies for taking some fun photos. This particular house was located on some other family property a few dozen miles away. The house, made with wood pegs- not nails, was completely disassembled, piece by piece and transported to its current location.

Basically the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle to re-assemble the tens of thousands of pieces of lumber and to re-lay as many bricks as possible. Many things are new about the house, such as the windows and siding and columns, that couldn't be saved, but there interior skeletal frame of the house is almost 200 years old.

The house sits in a beautiful clearing, surrounded on all sides by the trees. Adelle could find the old worn down paths from the original location of the main house to the smoke house and all the other tiny supporting buildings that once stood in close proximity.

I loved the intricate patterns in this chimney- the perfect zig-zag against the blue sky and a mix of old and new mortar.

I can't even begin to fathom the thousands of backbreaking hours spent cutting, painting and hanging up all the hardi-plank on all sides of the house to ensure it is protected for decades to come.

Just walking around this place gives you such a sense of history. Who else walked on this boards and cooked meals in this fireplace? What did they talk about when the sat on the front porch or did they worry about the weather and droughts just as much as we still do?

The house itself is really quite beautiful- with wonderful dormers and symmetric fireplaces on each side of the house.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: There are still people who adopt our history, who will protect it and keep it up and pass it along to future generations.